"Torri gemelli, torri gemelli," shouted the hysterical barmaid. It took a few seconds before Leavitt was able to translate the Italian phrase into "twin towers." Leavitt and his partner raced to a nearby pay phone, called Mitchell's mother and they were told, in heartbreaking detail, all the events of that fateful morning. "At first the catastrophe compelled me to reassess my own priorities, both as a writer and a human being. I feared that everything I had written would seem trivial, that literature itself and art itself would seem trivial in the light of such a mind-boggling crisis," says Leavitt, whose new book, The Marble Quilt, hit bookstore shelves a week before the attacks. "But then as the day wore on, my feelings changed. I started reading Iris Murdoch's novel, The Bell, and never in my life had literature seemed such a comfort, such a necessity."
"This was in part because of Murdoch's perpetual theme of the difficulty of being good in a bad world-seemed to resonant under the circumstances. Now, it seems to me that writing is more important than ever," he said. If writing is, in fact, more important these days, Leavitt's body of work ( Family Dancing, Lost Language of Cranes, The Page Turner ) would certainly rank among the most cherished in the gay literary canon...and his latest offering is no exception: The Marble Quilt is a short-story collection that surveys the complicated terrain of human relationships and showcases a variety of settings, including, appropriately enough, the aftermath of a plane crash.
Recently Leavitt, who divides his time between Italy and Gainesville, where he teaches at the University of Florida, agreed to participate in an e-mail interview where he openly addressed topics such as the luke-warm reaction to his last novel, Martin Bauman, his most bizarre experiences on the book tour circuit and, of course, how the events Sept. 11 reshaped his self-proclaimed "arrogance."
David Leavitt on what the common thread is that stitches together the stories in The Marble Quilt:
"If anything, I'd day the common thread is a preoccupation with death and mortality...not very surprising for a writer then in his late 30s ( now 40 ) ."
On why three of the stories ( The Infection Scene, Black Box and The Marble Quilt ) in this collection deal with HIV, though on many occasions the author has publicly stated his reservations with AIDS literature:
"Let me emphasize that with all three of these stories, when I started out, I never intended to write about HIV. The "germ" of The Infection Scene was the life of Lord Alfred Douglas, that of the Marble Quilt a murder and that of Black Box a plane crash. AIDS "came into" these stories, as it were, through the back door: in the case of The Infection Scene, because the parallels between Bosie's determination to infect a friend with mumps and the notion of willful infection with HIV were too obvious to ignore; in the case of The Marble Quilt and Black Box because these stories take place in the early '90s, when AIDS was at the fringe of every American consciousness. In other words, to have left AIDS out of these stories would have been dishonest, a betrayal of history. My guess is that if I had set out specifically to "take on AIDS" in these stories, I would have failed miserably: the very weightiness of the intention would have robbed the stories of their vitality."
On how to tell when a piece of writing functions better as a short story than a novel:
"My advice: give it time. In my experience, the recognition that a piece of fiction is a short story, and not the beginning of a novel, has come only after that fragment has sat for several months ( or even years ) in a drawer. I often think that fiction, like wine, needs to "age" before you can get a clear sense of its destiny. Another adage I often repeat to my students: a work of fiction has to be as long as it has to be. But sometimes it takes a while to figure out just what that ideal length is."
On the short story writers that have influenced his work:
"Lorrie Moore, who has reminded us of late just what a vital, supple and profound thing a story can be. Alice Munro, who proved that stories can be as rich and involving as novels. Grace Paley, the great mater ( or mistress ) of first-person narration. Allan Gurganus, the master of voice. Always John Cheever. Always Raymond Carver. Always William Trevor."
On being tagged part of the great Literary Brat Pack of the '80s ( along with Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Susan Minot and Meg Wolitzer ) :
"Meg and I used to be good friends; the others I barely know. I've met Ellis once, Minot twice, McInerney I haven't seen for a decade. This was a 'tag' invented by journalists eager to exploit a certain cult of youth that held sway in the early '80s, when the stock market was booming and men and women in their 20s were regularly making millions. There was a "brat pack" of actors...Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Charlie Sheen etc....and for the sake of a story, journalists decided to label McInerney et al a literary 'brat pack.' But we hardly saw ourselves as a school, and were in general pretty isolated from one another, by choice as much as circumstance, with the exception of McInerney and Ellis, who were then ( and, I believe, remain ) good friends. Also, if you look at the work of these writers, you'll see that really they have little in common. ( Just compare Glamorama to a restrained Minot novel such as Evening and you'll see what I'm getting at. ) "
On the lack of buzz generated by Martin Bauman:
"For me, the jury's still out on Martin Bauman. I think it's a novel that has a lot of truth in it; whether, however, it's a novel that people will in the end enjoy reading I can't yet say. Perhaps it is too dense, or at least too densely situated in the rather ugly ( and provincial ) ambience of New York in the '80s. Time will tell: no one liked The Lost Language of Cranes when it first came out, and it went on to be my most successful book, in terms of sales, at least. And The Page Turner, which got very little attention on its publication, is now being made into a film. All the actors told me how much they loved it...so it'll be interesting to see whether the film's release changes the fortunes of the book."
On his rather humbling experiences with the book tour circuit:
"Tales abound. One writer who shall remain nameless is reputed to compel her escorts to take her to Taco Bell before a reading, even if they are running 20 minutes late. Another insists on sitting in the back of the car, as if it were a limo. Another, on an overnight in Denver, went to bed with someone he met through a phone sex line only to find out the next morning that his partner-of-the-night had just written a scathing review of his book. Yet the dreariest moment from my own experience took place in Chicago. The "escort" ( funny euphemism ) , a rather assaultive woman, had just met me at the gate at O'Hare, and was walking me toward the baggage claim. On our way she went over my itinerary...which, I must admit, was meager. "This is just a waste of my time," she said. "Yesterday I took around Judge Wapner ( of The People's Court ) , and he had three times as many interviews as you do. Later, at the hotel, I was told apologetically that I could not have the 'writer's suite' as it was occupied by another writer on tour. I nearly wept with relief: the idea of sleeping in the same bed that had previously been slept in by E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Jay McInerney, Joyce Carol Oates ... I would have been up all night."
On how the events of Sept. 11 effected him as a human and as a writer:
"I will never again be so arrogant as to imagine that in literature I can predict the future or put my finger on the national pulse. Anyone who thought s/he had his/her finger on the national pulse on Sept, 10 got a big shock the next morning. Oddly I have written like a demon [ since the events of Sept, 11 ] , but to quote a student of mine, I've written 'with humility.' Another student said: 'I don't have the patience these days for smarty-pants books with faint heartbeats.' My sentiments, exactly."
